There are three ways of looking at this. Being an anarchist, I look at
it the third way, but let's start with the first two ways.

The first way of looking at it: Governments are not entitled to keep
secrets, period. If they expect their subjects to fund government
operations, on the dubious claim that "the people are the government,
and government officials are public servants," then the people / the
public are the bosses. The idea that an employee has a
right to keep the details of his or her work secret from the employer
is absurd. Any citizen should be able to walk into any government
office at any time, look at anything he or she wants to see, and demand
and get truthful answers to any question he or she cares to ask. If
that's not the case, then the aforementioned claim goes from "dubious"
to "complete bullshit."

The second way of looking at it -- a way to which I do not personally
subscribe, but which is the only other possibility in any way
compatible with the whole "government of, by and for the people" fairy
tale -- goes something like this:

Sure, government has a legitimate need to keep secrets in order to
pursue certain important public safety objectives such as -- to quote
Bowden again -- "the need to preserve the element of surprise in
military operations or criminal investigations, to permit leaders and
diplomats to bargain candidly, and to protect the identities of those
we ask to perform dangerous and difficult missions."

Keeping such secrets, however, is a privilege which can and
should be taken away when it's abused. And the public disclosures of
Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden establish, beyond any reasonable
doubt, that the US government has abused that privilege routinely and
on a massive scale, mostly for the purpose of hiding its other criminal
activities. So, it's time to yank that privilege.

The third way of looking at it, of course, is the anarchist way, which
means it's the correct way:

Governments are nothing more or less than gigantic criminal
conspiracies, overgrown street gangs with no claims whatsoever to
legitimacy. They are funded by theft and the basis of all their
operations is aggression. They're no more entitled to keep their
activities secret than any other gaggle of murderers, rapists and
thieves is.

Any way you cut it, this government is not and never was
entitled to keep those secrets.

The good news is that it's getting increasingly difficult for
governments to keep secrets at all, and that trend is not going to
reverse.

To the extent possible under law,
Thomas L.
Knapp has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights
to KN@PPSTER. This work is published from:
United States.
Direct link.
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2013/08/at-war-with-concept-of-secrecy-itself.html